Radiation therapy techniques using radiation comprised of photons or particles such as electrons, protons, or heavier particles are known. Generally speaking, a trained person such as a radiologist, a radiation oncologist, or the like treats a patient having undesired tissue (such as a tumor) by irradiating the undesired tissue in order to reduce or eradicate that undesired tissue. As such treatment can also damage or destroy healthy tissue, such radiation is typically administered in accordance with a corresponding plan. The goal of such a plan is usually to control the shape, strength, timing, and other characterizing attributes of the radiation beam (or beams) to limit the effects of the radiation to only the undesired tissue.
The development of such a plan comprises a complicated and often dynamic undertaking. Such a plan will ordinarily need to account for both the general geometries and characteristics of a given radiation platform as well as the unique attributes or capabilities of a given specific radiation platform to be employed in a given treatment scenario. Such a plan will also often heavily depend upon information regarding the undesired tissue itself as well as desired tissue in the vicinity of the former. This can include, for example, information concerning the treatment volume itself (such as the size and shape of the treatment volume) as well as relative positioning of that treatment volume with respect to other adjacent desired tissue.
To meet these needs, it is known, for example, to employ algorithmic and multiple-algorithm processes to calculate and devise an optimum specific, three-dimensional treatment plan for irradiating a given treatment volume in a given patient using a given irradiation platform through use of a variety of administration angles, power levels, and/or exposure times. Unfortunately, these treatment-planning processes are typically computationally intensive. In addition, many of the more useful processes are iterative in nature. As a result, it can be very time consuming to develop a useful radiation treatment plan for a given patient on a given day.
Such problems are exacerbated by the fact that most treatment plans require administration of a series of treatment fractions over a number of hours, days, weeks, or months. As these are highly dynamic application settings, however, virtually all of the pertinent parameters regarding the patient and the undesired tissue can and will change over time. These changes, in turn, may render an earlier calculated treatment plan less effective or even dangerous. This, in turn, leads to a need to re-calculate the plan to be observed for each treatment session.
To accommodate such circumstances, new (current) information regarding at least one physical characteristic regarding the patient is usually developed. This can comprise, for example, using imaging technology to obtain data regarding the undesired tissue and local desired tissue. An experienced human observer then studies this data to characterize this information in a form that is suitable for use in a treatment plan calculation process.
As already noted, however, the calculation of such plans is quite time consuming. The burdening of the time line to accommodate the human-assessed information upon which such a treatment plan adaptation process depends simply makes a bad situation worse in this regard. These corresponding delays can lead to patient discomfort and inconvenience as well as scheduling difficulties and unwanted platform downtime. Patient discomfort compounded by delay can in turn lead to unwanted movement by the patient resulting in an error in targeting and reduced treatment effectiveness.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. It will also be understood that the terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.